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{{Short description|American journalist (born 1957)}}
{{Undue|date=November 2010}}
'''Deborah Solomon''' (born August 9, 1957, [[New York City]]) is an American art critic, journalist and biographer. She wrote primarily for ''[[The New York Times]]'' and authored a weekly column called "Questions For" which ran in ''[[The New York Times Magazine]]'' from 2003 to 2011. She is currently the art critic for [[WNYC]] Public Radio, the New York City affiliate of [[NPR]].


{{Infobox person
=Early life and education=
| name = Deborah Solomon
Solomon was born in New York City and grew up in [[New Rochelle]], [[New York]]. Her parents, Jerry and Sally Solomon, owned an art gallery. She was educated at [[Cornell University]], where she majored in art history and served as the associate editor of ''[[The Cornell Daily Sun]]''. She earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1979. The following year, she received a master's degree from the [[Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism]]. Solomon was awarded a [[Guggenheim Fellowship]] in 2001 in the category of biography.<ref>http://www.gf.org/fellows/results?query=solomon&lower_bound=1925&upper_bound=2010&competition=ALL&fellowship_category=ALL&x=0&y=0</ref>
| image = <!-- just the filename, without the File: or Image: prefix or enclosing [[brackets]] -->
| alt =
| caption =
| birth_name = <!-- only use if different from name -->
| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1957|08|09}}
| birth_place = [[New York City]], U.S.
| death_date = <!-- {{Death date and age|YYYY|MM|DD|YYYY|MM|DD}} or {{Death-date and age|death date†|birth date†}} -->
| death_place =
| nationality = American
| other_names =
| occupation = {{flatlist|
* Journalist
* art critic
* biographer
}}
| years_active =
| children = 2
| spouse = Kent Sepkowitz
| known_for =
| notable_works =
}}


'''Deborah Solomon''' (born August 9, 1957) is an American art critic, journalist and biographer. She writes for ''[[The New York Times]]'', where she was previously a columnist. Her weekly column, "Questions For" ran in ''[[The New York Times Magazine]]'' from 2003 to 2011. She was subsequently the art critic for [[WNYC]] Public Radio, the [[New York City]] affiliate of [[NPR]].<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.wnyc.org/people/deborah-solomon/|title=People - Deborah Solomon|work=WNYC|access-date=25 May 2015}}</ref> She is sometimes confused with another reporter, Deborah B. Solomon, who is a financial journalist now working at ''[[The New York Times]]'' after a long career at ''[[The Wall Street Journal]]''.
=Professional work=
Solomon began her career writing about art for various publications, including ''[[The New Criterion]]''. For most of the 1990s, she served as the chief art critic of ''[[The Wall Street Journal]]''. She has written extensively about American painting, and is the author of several biographies of American artists, including [[Jackson Pollock]] and [[Joseph Cornell]] and [[Norman Rockwell]]. On January 5, 2003, Solomon made her debut as the New York Times Magazine's "Questions For" columnist. On February 4, 2011 she was dismissed from the magazine.<ref>http://observer.com/2011/02/exclusive-deborah-solomon-out-at-emnew-york-times-magazineem/ Deborah Solomon Out at New York Times Magazine Kat Stoeffel | 02/04/11</ref>


==Early life and education==
In 2010, Solomon was ranked by the [[Daily Beast]] as one of "The Left's Top 25 Journalists.".<ref>http://thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-17/the-lefts-top-25-journalists</ref> Solomon "is brilliantly transforming the interview format into a form of criticism," according to art critic Jerry Saltz ''[[New York Magazine]]''.<ref>http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/09/ask_an_art_critic_jerry_saltz.html</ref>
Solomon was born in [[New York City]] and grew up in [[New Rochelle, New York]]. Her parents, Jerry and Sally Solomon, owned an art gallery. In an interview with [[Francis Ford Coppola]], Solomon disclosed that her father was born in [[Romania]] and fled as a child in 1938.<ref>{{cite news
| title = Questions For
| url = https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/magazine/16wwln-Q4-t.html
| newspaper = The New York Times
| last = Solomon
| first = Deborah
| date = December 16, 2007
| access-date = March 26, 2015}}</ref> She was educated at [[Cornell University]], where she majored in art history and served as the associate editor of ''[[The Cornell Daily Sun]]''. She earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1979. The following year, she received a master's degree from the [[Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism]]. Solomon was awarded a [[Guggenheim Fellowship]] in 2001 in the category of biography.<ref name="gug">{{cite web|url=http://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/deborah-solomon/|title=Deborah Solomon|work=John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation|access-date=25 May 2015}}</ref>


==Career==
=Controversy=
===Journalism===
Solomon began her career writing about art for various publications, including ''[[The New Criterion]]''. For most of the 1990s, she served as the chief art critic of ''[[The Wall Street Journal]]''. She has written extensively about American painting and is a frequent interviewer on art subjects. She has also written three biographies of American artists.


In 2003, ''[[The New York Times Magazine]]'' hired her to author a regular weekly column in which she interviewed various people. She became "an expert at forcing her subjects... to say something" and developed a reputation as a "bulldog" interviewer, "one of the toughest interviewers around."<ref>{{cite news|url=http://magazine.good.is/articles/grand-inquisitor|title=Grand Inquisitor|work=Good Magazine|date=February 14, 2007|access-date=26 May 2015|archive-date=26 May 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150526070411/http://magazine.good.is/articles/grand-inquisitor|url-status=dead}}</ref> According to Kat Stoeffel in an opinion piece for ''[[The New York Observer]]'', Solomon's weekly "Questions For" column "has been a slow-burning controversy since Ms. Solomon’s debut in 2003. Ms. Solomon’s editing practices (despite the weekly disclaimer) led some of her subjects–including [[Tim Russert]], [[Ira Glass]], and [[Amy Dickinson]]–to cry foul. But then some weeks’ interviews–Das Racist comes to mind–seemed to redeem the whole practice."<ref name="NYO">{{cite news
==92nd Street Y incident==
| last = Stoeffel
On November 29, 2010, at the [[92nd Street Y]] in New York, Solomon was to interview actor [[Steve Martin]] about his new novel, ''[[An Object of Beauty]]'', which is set in the art world. In response to emails received in real-time by the Y staff from viewers of the interview, a note was dispatched to Solomon on-stage, telling her to shift the conversation from art to Steve Martin's film career.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.rttnews.com/Content/EntertainmentNews.aspx?Section=2&Id=1497498&SM=1 |title=Steve Martin's Boring Appearance Prompts Audience Refunds |publisher=Rttnews.com |date=2010-12-03 |accessdate=2011-01-11}}</ref> The next day, the Y issued an apology to audiences, along with a promise of a refund, prompting much controversy. Solomon told ''The New York Times'', "Frankly, you would think that an audience in New York, at the 92nd Street Y, would be interested in hearing about art and artists. I had no idea that the Y programmers wanted me to talk to Steve instead on what it's like to host the [[Oscars]] or appear in ''[[It's Complicated (film)|It's Complicated]]'' with [[Alec Baldwin]]. I think the Y, which is supposedly a champion of the arts, has behaved very crassly and is reinforcing the most philistine aspects of a culture that values celebrity and award shows over art."<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/nyregion/02refund.html "Comedian Conversation Falls Flat at 92nd Street Y]</ref>
| first = Kat
| title = Deborah Solomon Out at New York Times Magazine
| newspaper = The New York Observer
| date = Feb 4, 2011
| url =http://observer.com/2011/02/exclusive-deborah-solomon-out-at-emnew-york-times-magazineem/
| access-date = March 27, 2015}}</ref>


On November 29, 2010, at the [[92nd Street Y]] in New York, Solomon interviewed actor [[Steve Martin]] regarding his new novel, ''An Object of Beauty'', which is based in the New York art world. The interview became "a debacle"<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.salon.com/2010/12/28/an_object_of_beauty_steve_martin/|title="An Object of Beauty": Steve Martin's art-world dud|last=Allen|first=Brooke|date=December 27, 2010|work=Salon|access-date=25 May 2015}}</ref> when, midway through the conversation, a Y representative handed Solomon a note asking her to talk more about Martin’s movie career. The next day, the Y issued an apology and refund offer to the audience.<ref>{{cite news
In an op-ed piece in ''The New York Times'', Martin praised Solomon as an "art scholar" and said he would have rather "died onstage with art talk" than with the movie trivia questions the Y had chosen for him.<ref>{{cite news| url=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/opinion/05martin.html | work=The New York Times | first=Steve | last=Martin | title=The Art of Interruption | date=December 4, 2010}}</ref>
| title = Comedian Conversation Falls Flat at 92nd Street Y
| url = https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/nyregion/02refund.html
| newspaper = The New York Times
| last = Lee
| first = Felicia
| date = December 1, 2010
| access-date = March 26, 2015}}</ref>
In an op-ed in ''The New York Times'', Martin, a serious art collector, praised Solomon as an "art scholar" and said he would have rather "died onstage with art talk" than discuss movie trivia as the Y apparently preferred.<ref>{{cite news
| title = The Art of Interruption
| url = https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/opinion/05martin.html
| newspaper = The New York Times
| last = Martin
| first = Steve
| date = December 4, 2010
| access-date = March 26, 2015}}</ref>


On February 4, 2011, Solomon stepped down from writing her weekly column to write in house and continue her biography of [[Norman Rockwell]]. She was "encouraged by the paper’s top brass to continue writing for the paper" and has stated she will continue "asking as many impertinent questions as possible.”<ref name="NYO" /> In 2010, Solomon was ranked by the [[Daily Beast]] as one of "The Left's Top 25 Journalists."<ref>{{cite news
=="Questions For"==
| title= The Left's Top 25 Journalists
According to [[The New York Observer]] Solomon's weekly “Questions For” column "has been a slow-burning controversy since Ms. Solomon’s debut in 2003. Ms. Solomon’s editing practices (despite the weekly disclaimer) led some of her subjects–including [[Tim Russert]], [[Ira Glass]], and [[Amy Dickinson]]–to cry foul. But then some weeks’ interviews–Das Racist comes to mind–seemed to redeem the whole practice."<ref>http://observer.com/2011/02/exclusive-deborah-solomon-out-at-emnew-york-times-magazineem/ Deborah Solomon Out at New York Times Magazine Kat Stoeffel | 02/04/11</ref>
| date =2010
| url= http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2010/02/16/the-left-s-top-25-journalists.html#slide4
| website= The Daily Beast
| access-date=March 26, 2015}}</ref>


==Norman Rockwell==
===Books===
Solomon has written three biographies of American artists: ''[[Jackson Pollock]]: A Biography'' ([[Simon & Schuster]], 1987, {{ISBN|978-0-8154-1182-6}}); ''Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of [[Joseph Cornell]]'' ([[Farrar, Straus & Giroux]], 1997, {{ISBN|0-374-18012-1}}); and ''American Mirror: The Life and Art of [[Norman Rockwell]]'' ([[Farrar, Straus & Giroux]], 2013, {{ISBN|978-0-374-11309-4}}). She is currently at work on a full-scale biography of the American artist Jasper Johns, who authorized the book, and about whom she has written since 1988. Johns has specified that the book cannot be published until after his death.
In 2013 Solomon's book "American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell" was published. Among other controversies she made unfounded assertions regarding Rockwell's sexuality. On May 14, 2014 [[The New Criterion]] published a review entitled "Painting a false portrait" and further stated "Deborah Solomon's new book on Norman Rockwell grossly misrepresents the artist and gives us an opportunity to consider the contemporary state of biography."<ref>http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Painting-a-false-portrait-7887/ |title=Painting a False Portrait |work=The New Criterion Painting |author=Bruce Cole |date=May 2014 |accessdate=March 25, 2015</ref>


''Utopia Parkway'' was described in ''[[Slate (magazine)|Slate]]'' as a "fascinating account of Cornell's life" which "narrowed the distance between the life and the art, chronicling everything with a sympathy and even a generosity one would hardly have dreamt possible in our cynical and deconstructive age."<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/1997/03/little_boxes.html|title=Little Boxes 2 1 0 The cloistered life and fantastic art of Joseph Cornell|last=Danto|first=Arthur|date=March 26, 1997|work=Slate|access-date=26 May 2015}}</ref>
=Personal life=
Solomon is married to Kent Sepkowitz, an infectious-disease specialist and the Deputy Physician-in-Chief at [[Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center]] and they have two sons. She is of [[Romania]]n descent.<ref name=NYT>{{cite news|author=Deborah Solomon|title=my father was born in Romania and fled as a child in 1938|url=http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/magazine/16wwln-Q4-t.html|work=The New York Times|date=December 16, 2007|accessdate=July 26, 2008}}</ref>


The Norman Rockwell biography, ''American Mirror'', received the most attention. It was "controversial" but garnered "generally positive reviews".<ref name = "Thomas">{{cite news
=Bibliography=
| title = Family of Norman Rockwell skewers new biography
*''Jackson Pollock: A Biography'', [[Simon & Schuster]], 1987, ISBN 978-0-8154-1182-6
| url = https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/names/2013/12/29/family-norman-rockwell-skewers-new-biography/0pz1QC2f040NTz4AtPpXNK/story.html
* ''Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell'', [[Farrar, Straus & Giroux]], 1997, ISBN 0-374-18012-1
| newspaper = [[The Boston Globe]]
* ''American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell'', [[Farrar, Straus & Giroux]], 2013, ISBN 978-0-374-11309-4
| date = December 29, 2013
| access-date = March 26, 2015}}</ref>
The book was described as an "engaging and ultimately sad" portrait of Rockwell which "fully justifies a fresh look at his life";,<ref name="One">{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/01/books/american-mirror-about-norman-rockwell-by-deborah-solomon.html|title=One Complicated Life, Illustrated|last=Wilmerding|first=John|work=The New York Times |date=October 31, 2013|access-date=25 May 2015}}</ref> as a "sympathetic and probing new biography";<ref name = "Christopher">{{cite magazine
| title = An American Romantic
| url = http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/dec/19/norman-rockwell-american-romantic/#fnr-*
| magazine = [[New York Review of Books]]
| first = Christopher
| last = Benfey
| date = December 19, 2013
| access-date = March 26, 2015}}</ref> and as a "brilliantly insightful chronicle of the life of illustrator Norman Rockwell".<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304200804579165980988272564|title=Book Review: 'American Mirror' by Deborah Solomon|last=Lopez|first=Jonathan|date=November 8, 2013|work=[[The Wall Street Journal]]|access-date=25 May 2015}}</ref> Controversy arose because in the book she suggests that Rockwell may have been a closeted homosexual. In a review for ''[[The New York Times]]'', [[Garrison Keillor]] noted sarcastically (''"Oh, come on!"'') that she "does seem awfully eager to find homoeroticism" in Rockwell's work.<ref>{{cite news| title = Norman Rockwell, the Storyteller
| url = https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/books/review/american-mirror-the-life-and-art-of-norman-rockwell-by-deborah-solomon.html?_r=0
| newspaper = The New York Times
| last = Garrison
| first = Kellior
| date = December 19, 2013
| access-date = March 26, 2015}}</ref> She also "detected a pattern of pedophilia" in his selection and portrayal of child models.<ref name = "Christopher"/> Rockwell's family angrily denied the implications. The artist's son [[Thomas Rockwell]] told ''[[The Boston Globe]]'', "The biography is so poor and so inflammatory, we just had to respond... It’s being presented as the definitive biography and it’s so wrong, we just felt we had to correct the record."<ref name = "Thomas" /> Rockwell's granddaughter Abigail has written several articles denouncing Solomon's book as a "disaster" and a "fraud".<ref>[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/abigail-rockwell/deborah-solomon-norman-rockwell-disaster_b_5607745.html Deborah Solomon's Disaster] (and How She Duped So Many) by Abigail Rockwell [the artist's granddaughter], [[Huffington Post]] 7-30-2014</ref><ref>[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/abigail-rockwell/deborah-solomon-norman-rockwell-falsifications_b_6705134.html Autopsy of a Fraud] (Update on Deborah Solomon's Disastrous Norman Rockwell Bio) by Abigail Rockwell, [[Huffington Post]] 2-23-2015</ref>

==Personal life==
Solomon is married to Kent Sepkowitz, an infectious-disease specialist and the Deputy Physician-in-Chief at [[Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center]] and frequent contributor to various publications.<ref>{{cite web
| title = Articles by Kent Sepkowitz
| url = http://www.thedailybeast.com/contributors/kent-sepkowitz.html
| website = The Daily Beast
| access-date = March 26, 2015}}</ref> They have two sons.

==Awards and honors==
*1998 [[New York Public Library]] Books to Remember Award, for ''Utopia Parkway''<ref name="NYPL">{{cite web|url=http://www.nypl.org/collections/nypl-recommendations/lists/btr1997|title=25 Books to Remember from 1997|work=New York Public Library|access-date=25 May 2015}}</ref>
*2001 [[John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship]] in the field of biography<ref name = "gug" />
*2014 [[Los Angeles Times Book Award]], finalist in the biography category, for ''American Mirror''<ref>{{cite web|url=http://bandofthebes.typepad.com/bandofthebes/2014/02/los-angeles-times-book-award-nominees.html|title=Los Angeles Times Book Award Nominees|date=February 19, 2014|work=Band of Thebes|access-date=26 May 2015}}</ref>
*2014 [[PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography]], shortlisted for ''American Mirror''<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.pen.org/literature/2014-penjacqueline-bograd-weld-award-biography|title=2014 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography|work=PEN|date=16 April 2014|access-date=26 May 2015}}</ref>
*2018 Commencement speaker at the [[New York Academy of Art]]; earned an honorary doctorate in fine arts.<ref>{{cite tweet|user=NYAcademyofArt|number=997535765843333120|title=Tweeter message}} {{dead link|date=January 2023}}</ref>


==References==
==References==
{{Reflist}}
{{Reflist|2}}


==External links==
==External links==
* [http://topics.nytimes.com/top/features/magazine/columns/questions_for/index.html Interviews by Deborah Solomon for the ''New York Times'']
* [http://topics.nytimes.com/top/features/magazine/columns/questions_for/index.html Interviews by Deborah Solomon for the "Questions for" column in the ''New York Times Magazine'']
* [http://www.good.is/post/grand-inquisitor/ Article on Deborah Solomon in ''Good Magazine'', February 14, 2007]
* [http://www.slate.com/id/2971/ Arthur Danto's review of Solomon's ''Utopia Parkway'', ''Slate'', March 26, 1997]
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/books/review/Upfront-t.html?ref=review/ Interview with Deborah Solomon in the ''New York Times Book Review'', June 13, 2010]
* [http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2013/may/09/art-talk-why-art-critics-matter/ Deborah Solomon talking about art criticism on WNYC radio]
* [http://us.macmillan.com/americanmirrorthelifeandartofnormanrockwell/DeborahSolomon/ Deborah Solomon page at Farrar, Straus & Giroux]
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/01/books/american-mirror-about-norman-rockwell-by-deborah-solomon.html/ John Wilmerding's review of Solomon's "American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell," New York Times, October 31, 2013]
* [http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/through-the-looking-glass/ In-depth interview with Deborah Solomon in Guernica Magazine, January 15, 2014.]
* [http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/through-the-looking-glass/ In-depth interview with Deborah Solomon in Guernica Magazine, January 15, 2014.]
* [http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/1urzjl/deborah-solomon/ Deborah Solomon's television appearance on "The Colbert Report," on January 14, 2014]
* [http://www.cc.com/video/1urzjl/the-colbert-report-deborah-solomon/ Solomon's appearance on The Colbert Report]


{{GeraldLoebAward Deadline and Beat Reporting}}
{{Authority control|VIAF=94134624}}
{{Authority control}}


{{Persondata <!-- Metadata: see [[Wikipedia:Persondata]]. -->
| NAME = Solomon, Deborah
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES =
| SHORT DESCRIPTION = American journalist
| DATE OF BIRTH = August 9, 1957
| PLACE OF BIRTH =
| DATE OF DEATH =
| PLACE OF DEATH =
}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Solomon, Deborah}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Solomon, Deborah}}
[[Category:1957 births]]
[[Category:1957 births]]
[[Category:People from New Rochelle, New York]]
[[Category:American art critics]]
[[Category:American biographers]]
[[Category:American journalists]]
[[Category:American people of Romanian-Jewish descent]]
[[Category:Columbia University alumni]]
[[Category:Cornell University alumni]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:Gerald Loeb Award winners]]
[[Category:21st-century American women]]
[[Category:American women writers]]
[[Category:American people of Romanian-Jewish descent]]
[[Category:Writers from New York]]
[[Category:American women biographers]]
[[Category:Guggenheim Fellows]]
[[Category:American women journalists]]
[[Category:American women journalists]]
[[Category:Women biographers]]
[[Category:American women writers]]
[[Category:Women critics]]
[[Category:American women art critics]]
[[Category:Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism alumni]]
[[Category:Cornell University alumni]]
[[Category:Gerald Loeb Award winners for Deadline and Beat Reporting]]
[[Category:Journalists from New York (state)]]
[[Category:Writers from New Rochelle, New York]]

Latest revision as of 18:29, 6 April 2024

Deborah Solomon
Born (1957-08-09) August 9, 1957 (age 66)
New York City, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Occupations
  • Journalist
  • art critic
  • biographer
SpouseKent Sepkowitz
Children2

Deborah Solomon (born August 9, 1957) is an American art critic, journalist and biographer. She writes for The New York Times, where she was previously a columnist. Her weekly column, "Questions For" ran in The New York Times Magazine from 2003 to 2011. She was subsequently the art critic for WNYC Public Radio, the New York City affiliate of NPR.[1] She is sometimes confused with another reporter, Deborah B. Solomon, who is a financial journalist now working at The New York Times after a long career at The Wall Street Journal.

Early life and education[edit]

Solomon was born in New York City and grew up in New Rochelle, New York. Her parents, Jerry and Sally Solomon, owned an art gallery. In an interview with Francis Ford Coppola, Solomon disclosed that her father was born in Romania and fled as a child in 1938.[2] She was educated at Cornell University, where she majored in art history and served as the associate editor of The Cornell Daily Sun. She earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1979. The following year, she received a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Solomon was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2001 in the category of biography.[3]

Career[edit]

Journalism[edit]

Solomon began her career writing about art for various publications, including The New Criterion. For most of the 1990s, she served as the chief art critic of The Wall Street Journal. She has written extensively about American painting and is a frequent interviewer on art subjects. She has also written three biographies of American artists.

In 2003, The New York Times Magazine hired her to author a regular weekly column in which she interviewed various people. She became "an expert at forcing her subjects... to say something" and developed a reputation as a "bulldog" interviewer, "one of the toughest interviewers around."[4] According to Kat Stoeffel in an opinion piece for The New York Observer, Solomon's weekly "Questions For" column "has been a slow-burning controversy since Ms. Solomon’s debut in 2003. Ms. Solomon’s editing practices (despite the weekly disclaimer) led some of her subjects–including Tim Russert, Ira Glass, and Amy Dickinson–to cry foul. But then some weeks’ interviews–Das Racist comes to mind–seemed to redeem the whole practice."[5]

On November 29, 2010, at the 92nd Street Y in New York, Solomon interviewed actor Steve Martin regarding his new novel, An Object of Beauty, which is based in the New York art world. The interview became "a debacle"[6] when, midway through the conversation, a Y representative handed Solomon a note asking her to talk more about Martin’s movie career. The next day, the Y issued an apology and refund offer to the audience.[7] In an op-ed in The New York Times, Martin, a serious art collector, praised Solomon as an "art scholar" and said he would have rather "died onstage with art talk" than discuss movie trivia as the Y apparently preferred.[8]

On February 4, 2011, Solomon stepped down from writing her weekly column to write in house and continue her biography of Norman Rockwell. She was "encouraged by the paper’s top brass to continue writing for the paper" and has stated she will continue "asking as many impertinent questions as possible.”[5] In 2010, Solomon was ranked by the Daily Beast as one of "The Left's Top 25 Journalists."[9]

Books[edit]

Solomon has written three biographies of American artists: Jackson Pollock: A Biography (Simon & Schuster, 1987, ISBN 978-0-8154-1182-6); Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997, ISBN 0-374-18012-1); and American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013, ISBN 978-0-374-11309-4). She is currently at work on a full-scale biography of the American artist Jasper Johns, who authorized the book, and about whom she has written since 1988. Johns has specified that the book cannot be published until after his death.

Utopia Parkway was described in Slate as a "fascinating account of Cornell's life" which "narrowed the distance between the life and the art, chronicling everything with a sympathy and even a generosity one would hardly have dreamt possible in our cynical and deconstructive age."[10]

The Norman Rockwell biography, American Mirror, received the most attention. It was "controversial" but garnered "generally positive reviews".[11] The book was described as an "engaging and ultimately sad" portrait of Rockwell which "fully justifies a fresh look at his life";,[12] as a "sympathetic and probing new biography";[13] and as a "brilliantly insightful chronicle of the life of illustrator Norman Rockwell".[14] Controversy arose because in the book she suggests that Rockwell may have been a closeted homosexual. In a review for The New York Times, Garrison Keillor noted sarcastically ("Oh, come on!") that she "does seem awfully eager to find homoeroticism" in Rockwell's work.[15] She also "detected a pattern of pedophilia" in his selection and portrayal of child models.[13] Rockwell's family angrily denied the implications. The artist's son Thomas Rockwell told The Boston Globe, "The biography is so poor and so inflammatory, we just had to respond... It’s being presented as the definitive biography and it’s so wrong, we just felt we had to correct the record."[11] Rockwell's granddaughter Abigail has written several articles denouncing Solomon's book as a "disaster" and a "fraud".[16][17]

Personal life[edit]

Solomon is married to Kent Sepkowitz, an infectious-disease specialist and the Deputy Physician-in-Chief at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and frequent contributor to various publications.[18] They have two sons.

Awards and honors[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "People - Deborah Solomon". WNYC. Retrieved 25 May 2015.
  2. ^ Solomon, Deborah (December 16, 2007). "Questions For". The New York Times. Retrieved March 26, 2015.
  3. ^ a b "Deborah Solomon". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 25 May 2015.
  4. ^ "Grand Inquisitor". Good Magazine. February 14, 2007. Archived from the original on 26 May 2015. Retrieved 26 May 2015.
  5. ^ a b Stoeffel, Kat (Feb 4, 2011). "Deborah Solomon Out at New York Times Magazine". The New York Observer. Retrieved March 27, 2015.
  6. ^ Allen, Brooke (December 27, 2010). ""An Object of Beauty": Steve Martin's art-world dud". Salon. Retrieved 25 May 2015.
  7. ^ Lee, Felicia (December 1, 2010). "Comedian Conversation Falls Flat at 92nd Street Y". The New York Times. Retrieved March 26, 2015.
  8. ^ Martin, Steve (December 4, 2010). "The Art of Interruption". The New York Times. Retrieved March 26, 2015.
  9. ^ "The Left's Top 25 Journalists". The Daily Beast. 2010. Retrieved March 26, 2015.
  10. ^ Danto, Arthur (March 26, 1997). "Little Boxes 2 1 0 The cloistered life and fantastic art of Joseph Cornell". Slate. Retrieved 26 May 2015.
  11. ^ a b "Family of Norman Rockwell skewers new biography". The Boston Globe. December 29, 2013. Retrieved March 26, 2015.
  12. ^ Wilmerding, John (October 31, 2013). "One Complicated Life, Illustrated". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 May 2015.
  13. ^ a b Benfey, Christopher (December 19, 2013). "An American Romantic". New York Review of Books. Retrieved March 26, 2015.
  14. ^ Lopez, Jonathan (November 8, 2013). "Book Review: 'American Mirror' by Deborah Solomon". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 25 May 2015.
  15. ^ Garrison, Kellior (December 19, 2013). "Norman Rockwell, the Storyteller". The New York Times. Retrieved March 26, 2015.
  16. ^ Deborah Solomon's Disaster (and How She Duped So Many) by Abigail Rockwell [the artist's granddaughter], Huffington Post 7-30-2014
  17. ^ Autopsy of a Fraud (Update on Deborah Solomon's Disastrous Norman Rockwell Bio) by Abigail Rockwell, Huffington Post 2-23-2015
  18. ^ "Articles by Kent Sepkowitz". The Daily Beast. Retrieved March 26, 2015.
  19. ^ "25 Books to Remember from 1997". New York Public Library. Retrieved 25 May 2015.
  20. ^ "Los Angeles Times Book Award Nominees". Band of Thebes. February 19, 2014. Retrieved 26 May 2015.
  21. ^ "2014 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography". PEN. 16 April 2014. Retrieved 26 May 2015.
  22. ^ @NYAcademyofArt (May 18, 2018). "Tweeter message" (Tweet) – via Twitter. [dead link]

External links[edit]

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